Timber, Fish, & Wildlife; the Fish & Forest Agreement; they're all incremental improvements that are resulting in small and gradual improvements in riparian zones. Will this lead to 1850 levels of fish abundance? Hell no! No way it can do that, and it's not intended to. It's intended to improve stream habitat quality so that our streams are capable of producing anadromous fish, as in SOME, instead of NONE, while maintaining a viable forest products industry. If you think these conditions are bad, you obviously haven't seen the pre-1973 first Forest Practices Act (first in the nation) conditions.

As for enforcement, DNR enforces forest practices in WA state except on federal lands. Except that enforcement isn't something that DNR actually likes to do. They're all foresters, and it's an unwritten code violation to rat out your fraternity brother. Fortunately, like with most things relating to enforcement, most of the logger comply with most of the regulations most of the time. And that's about the same level of compliance you get when enforcement of anything is strictly enforced. Ergo, why I'm not an enforcement junkie.

Sg